Alena Jaklová: GERMAN SURNAMES IN THE SOUTH-BOHEMIAN BORDERLAND AND THEIR WORD-FORMATION AS- PECTS 1 Informatol. 53, 2020., 1-2 INFO-2218 UDK : 81’373.232(437.3=112.2) Primljeno / Received: 2019-18-12 Izvorni znanstveni rad / Original Scientific Paper https://doi.org/10.32914/i.53.1-2.1 GERMAN SURNAMES IN THE SOUTH-BOHEMIAN BORDERLAND AND THEIR WORD-FORMATION ASPECTS NJEMAČKA PREZIMENA NA JUŽNOJ ČEŠKOJ GRANICI I ASPEKTI NJIHOVOG JEZIČNOG FORMIRANJA Alena Jaklová Faculty of Philosophy, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište Južne Češke, České Budějovice, Češka Abstract Sažetak This paper deals with the German surnames used Ovaj se rad bavi njemačkim prezimenima koje by the inhabitants of the South- Bohemian border koriste stanovnici južne češke pogranične regije i region and with their specific features. The first njihovim specifičnostima. Prva od njih je veća of these is the higher frequency of such surnames učestalost takvih prezimena u regiji (preko 18% u in the region (over 18 % in South Bohemia com- Južnoj Češkoj u usporedbi s nacionalnim prosje- pared to the national average of about 13 %), the kom od oko 13%), drugi aspekt je tvorba riječi. U second aspect is their word-formation. In the pro- procesu integracije njemačkih prezimena u češki cess of integration of German surnames into the jezik pokazalo se da je sufiks koji je najčešće kori- Czech language, the ending most commonly em- šten u južnoj Češkoj -a, a slijede ga i ostali pro- ployed in South Bohemia turned out to be -a, fol- duktivni sufiksi, poput sufiksa umanjenica -ek, - lowed by other productive suffixes, such as the ík / -ik, -ka i -ko. diminutive suffixes -ek, -ík/-ik, -ka and -ko. Najproduktivniji sufiksi korišteni na nacionalnoj The most productive suffixes employed at the na- razini bili su -ek, -ík (s varijantama) i -ák. /1/ tional level were -ek, -ík (with variants) and -ák. /1/ I. INTRODUCTION and was naturally in contact with the Czech in- German surnames used by the inhabitants of habitants. the Czech Republic can be traced back to direct As a result of this long-term contact, the two contacts of ethnic Czechs with ethnic Germans, languages, Czech and German, exerted mutual spanning centuries. In South Bohemia, these influence. In Czech, this influence is reflected at contacts were made more intense by the exist- the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, ence of the Golden Trail, the most significant and lexis /3/. The processes involved included medieval communication route, one of whose adoption of German words, loans, and calques, branches connected the towns of Passau and and resulted in the frequent occurrence of Ger- Prachatice from the early 11th century /2/. Until man surnames, place names and names for after WWII, another factor was the large Ger- landscape features. man population in the Czech border region, the Sudeten, which dated back to the 13th century ISSN 1330-0067 Coden: IORME7 Alena Jaklová: GERMAN SURNAMES IN THE SOUTH-BOHEMIAN BORDERLAND AND THEIR WORD-FORMATION AS- PECTS Informatol. 53, 2020., 1-2 2 II. OBJECT OF THE RESEARCH, in the city of České Budějovice, which, although METHODOLOGY, MATERIAL-BASED not situated in the Sudeten and never crossed CORPUS by the Golden Trail, was largely German from This paper deals with word-formation its rise in the first half of the 13th century until analyses of German surnames currently used in the early 20th century, the proportion of Ger- the South-Bohemian region. The examples ad- man surname bearers is still 18.32 %. duced come from a corpus compiled for the area explored, using archive materials and tran- III. GERMAN SURNAMES IN SOUTH BO- scripts of documents obtained from selected lo- HEMIAN BORDER AREA AND THEIR ETY- cal authorities. The area explored includes a belt MOLOGICAL AND FORD-FORMING along the border of South Bohemia delimited by ANALYSIS the towns of Volary, Netolice, and the city of The word-formation of German sur- České Budějovice. The focus on this particular names used by Czechs shows some specific fea- part of South Bohemia results from its history of tures in South Bohemia. From the word-for- German settlement and from the ancient trade mation point of view, German surnames in Bo- route, the Golden Trail, which once crossed it. hemia are represented both by morphologically The data in the corpus are divided chronologi- simple words and morphologically complex cally into three separate parts: 1) German sur- ones. The latter include forms derived by suf- names used in the area before WWII; 2) German fixes (especially -er, -mann, -auer and various di- surnames used in the area in the 1950s; 3) Ger- minutive suffixes), and compounds. J. Ma- man surnames used in the area in the late 20th túšová /1/ points out that a large proportion of century and at present. This paper presents ex- these were not coined in the process of creating amples of German surnames from the third part a surname, but rather came to be used as sur- of the corpus obtained by analysing the docu- names in their "finished" form. As a result, Ger- ments cited in the Sources and Online Sources, man surnames are difficult to classify into dis- which are given in the final Bibliography. The tinct word-formation categories and types. In first piece of evidence of the centuries-long co- the process of integration of German surnames existence of Czech and German population in into Czech, the influence of the target language South Bohemia is the still increased frequency is marked particularly by the addition of Czech of German surnames in this region. According word-formation suffixes and endings to Ger- to J. Beneš /4/, German surnames in Bohemia man lexical bases. According to J. Matúšová amounted to 8.5% in relation to Czech ones in /1/, the word-formation integration of German the 1950s and 1960s, while in Moravia the pro- surnames into Czech most frequently em- portion was 6.7% (the proportion of the bearers ployed the suffixes -ek, -ík and -ák (along with of these surnames was not identified). Simi- their variants). Other suffixes (e.g. -áš, -át, -ský) larly, M. Knappová /5/ concludes that German were used rarely or exceptionally. The most surnames constitute about one tenth of the productive Czech word-formation device in the overall number of surnames in Bohemia. J. Ma- present corpus, which included a total of 6,237 túšová /1/, who has undertaken the most exten- German surnames presently used by Czechs in sive research, puts the proportion of surnames the four municipalities, turned out to be the of German origin among all of the surnames ending -a. This ending (a morphological suffix, used in the territory of the Czech Republic at inflectional suffix) represents a Czech mor- around 21.5%, that is, roughly a fifth. A compar- pheme performing two functions: 1) a gram- ison of the number of the separate surname matical function: a) it assigns the word to a par- bearers suggested that roughly 13% of Czechs ticular part of speech; b) expresses grammatical currently used surnames of German origin. categories, and 2) a word-forming function. However, the South-Bohemian towns explored The ending -a is typical of a large num- in this study show a higher proportion of Ger- ber of Czech common nouns (especially femi- man surname bearers: 18.96 % in Prachatice, nine nouns following the inflectional paradigm 18.52 % in Volary, and 16.37 % in Netolice. Even žena, but also masculine nouns following the ISSN 1330-0067 Coden: IORME7 Alena Jaklová: GERMAN SURNAMES IN THE SOUTH-BOHEMIAN BORDERLAND AND THEIR WORD-FORMATION AS- PECTS 3 Informatol. 53, 2020., 1-2 paradigm předseda), as well as surnames; this is Keprta - the Czech ending -a is used often true even if the base from which the sur- with a German surname used by Czechs and name originated does not have this suffix, e.g. originating from personal or first names: Buna - from the personal name Budivoj; Kasa – Gebhart + -a from the verb kasat se = hurry, get ready to take Kolafa - a surname derived by the Czech on sb, to hitch up a piece of clothing; Paťha – ending -a from German words denoting from the verb paťhat = to limp /6/. As pointed wooden utensils: Kochlöffel = a cooking spoon out by J. Beneš /4/, the ending -a is probably re- Krauz/Krauza - the surname Kraus is lated to (or rather identical with) the Greek, formed from adjectives denoting conspicuous Latin and German suffix -o, e.g. in the common appearance: MHG.: krȗs = curly, frizzy, in the noun cicer and the surname Cicero. Czech-speaking environment the surname The ending -a is used in German sur- Krauza is derived from the surname Kraus/Krauz names borne by Czechs along with lexical bases by the addition of the ending -a representing various semantic types /7/, e.g.: Krejza - a surname originating from Bejna 1) related to parts of the body: common nouns for landscape features: MHG Bein = a leg, followed by the ending -a; 2) related kreis = a circle, surrounding area, boundary, to animal nouns, more specifically insects: in MGH kreiȥ = a circle, a surrounding area, terri- Middle High German (MHG) bin, bîn = a bee, tory or region /8/ + the Czech ending -a the ending -a Other surnames were formed in a simi- Bína – 1) from nouns denoting crafts- lar way, by adding the ending -a, e.g. Hejna, men working with wood: Binder = a cooper; in Krýcha, Kursa/Kurza, Maxa, Nádera, Patera, the Czech-speaking environment the common Sebera, Šanda, Špeta, Šturma, Turyna/Turina, and suffix -(d)er was replaced by the ending -a in a Zitta, as well as many others.